For many web portals and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), advertising is a major source of revenue. One form of advertising involves showing advertisers"" ad banners on displayed web sites. For example, a preeminent portal such as Yahoo! displays advertisers"" ads on web sites. In return, the advertisers pay a fee for each ad viewed by web users. Contracts to show ads are normally signed several weeks or months before ads get delivered and are often expressed in terms of page views. The duration of contracts typically ranges from one day to multiple years.
There are typically several types of web advertising contracts, including regular contracts, exclusive contracts and infinite contracts. Generally, for regular contracts, the advertisers purchase a designated number of ad views on a chosen space (web page or collection of pages), for exclusive contracts, advertisers purchase all the ad views on a chosen space, and for infinite contracts, advertisers purchase all the leftover ad views on a chosen space after other regular contracts related to that space have been fulfilled.
An advertising contract can also be entered into for searches related to a designated search word or phrase, whereby the contracted for ad is shown on a search results page when the contracted for search word or phrase is used. For example, when a user searches for xe2x80x9cPokemonxe2x80x9d and an advertiser has contracted for the display of one of its ads on such search results page, that ad is displayed on the search result page. Inventory prediction is useful to predict how many times a word or phrase will be searched for in the future as the number of search results pages available for ads depends on the number of searches done.
Before entering into an advertising contract, it is advantageous to ensure that all the designated ad views can be successfully delivered during the contract period. If a space is oversold, the advertisers would not be happy, and if a space is undersold, revenue would be lost by not delivering ads on the space or by giving away the views to an infinite contract. Therefore, it is important to accurately predict the number of page views to be consumed in the future. This is called inventory prediction. In general, it is desirable to predict the total inventory available, e.g., on an entire network such as the Yahoo! network, as well as the inventory available for each space.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide an inventory prediction system (IPS) that takes into account and efficiently addresses the above and other issues.
The present invention provides inventory prediction systems and methods that overcome problems associated with inventory prediction for page views.
According to the embodiments of the present invention, systems and methods are provided for predicting visitor traffic to a collection of web site pages. The systems and methods are used, as an example, to predict the inventory of total available online advertisement slots available within the network for a forthcoming period. The visitor traffic includes page viewing, listening or transacting on web pages within a web site, wherein the web pages are categorized by subject, interest areas or specific user queries such as word or phrase searches. For each page whose traffic is being predicted, the system takes into account annual seasonality, day-of-week, holidays, special events, short histories, user demographics, user web behavior (viewing, listening and transacting) and parent and child web page characteristics.
According to an aspect of the invention, a computer implemented method is provided for predicting inventory for web spaces in a network of spaces. The method typically comprises generating historical data for a first web space based on records of daily activity for the first web space and any descendent spaces of the first web space. The method also typically comprises predicting inventory for the first web space based on the historical data generated for the first web space. Predictions are typically performed by applying to the historical data at least one of a growth and seasonality separation (GSS) process, a trend copy (COPY) process, a model inheritance process, a linear trend estimation (LTE) process and a moving average process.
According to another aspect of the invention, a system is provided for predicting inventory for web spaces in a collection of related web spaces. The system typically comprises a historical data generating module that produces historical data for web spaces, wherein the historical data generating module produces historical data for a first web space based on records of daily activity for the first web space and for descendent spaces of the first web space in the collection. The system also typically comprises an inventory predicting module that predicts inventory for the web spaces, wherein the inventory predicting module processes the historical data for the first web space and generates an inventory prediction for the first web space.
Reference to the remaining portions of the specification, including the drawings and claims, will realize other features and advantages of the present invention. Further features and advantages of the present invention, as well as the structure and operation of various embodiments of the present invention, are described in detail below with respect to the accompanying drawings. In the drawings, like reference numbers indicate identical or functionally similar elements.